EARLY SCHOOL DAYS OF SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 23, 2 October 1896, Page 4

EARLY SCHOOL DAYS OF SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY.

The Melbourne Atlcoratv has begun the publication of the memoirs of the Hon. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy K.C.MGL, written by the veteran statesman himself. It is entitled "My life in two Hemispheres." The followinir excerpt from the first chapter contains an account of his school days :—": — " Some account of my early school days will help the reader to understand the social condition of Ulster at that time. The Ulster Catholics had been deprived by the Puritan Parliament in Dublin of their lands, their churches, and their schools at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and they were long forbidden by statute to obtain education at home or abroad, or to possess property in land. At the time I speak of their schools were still very often what were then known as " poor schools." The schoolroom was commonly a barn or a garret, the furniture rude and scanty, the walls and windows bare, and some of the pupils probably shoeless and unwashed. But these establishments were regarded as evidence of remarkable progress by those who remembered the " hedge schools " of a previous generation, which had not even the shelter of a roof. My first schoolmaster was a one-handed man, named Neill Quinn, who had probably become a teacher because this deficiency unfitted him for any other employment. Ho performed duties which were merely manunl with marvellous dexterity, mending a pen, for example, as speedily and skilfully as a man with two hands. A long loop of twine passed through two holes in a table held the quill fiat, and was kept fast by his foot in the other end of the loop, while he trimmed it with his right hand, which happily remained. Of the elements of education, Mr Quimi did not teach much, I fear, but he told us stories, generally little apologues or homilies, intended to impart a homely moral. His rudimentary science was taught with a scanty equipment of instruments, but he contrived to make it impressive. One day he let his hat fall from his head to the floor, and exclaimed — " Now, boys, which of you will tell me why that hat fell dowwto the ground instead of falling up to the ceiling 1 " f My escape from this primitive institution was one of the most fortunate incidents of my life. My eldest sister, a girl of vigorous will met me one day coming home from school in the midst of a clamouring swarm of urchins, some of them bare-footed and ragged, and all riotous and undisciplined, and she peremptorily declared that I should never return to that society. But where was I to go ? There was not a Catholic school in the county a

whit better. There was, however, a classical academy in the town taught by a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. John Bleckley, where the boarders were sons of the small gentry and professional men of two or three neighbouring counties, and the day boys sons of the principal townspeople. There were about fifty pupils, all Protestants or Presbyterians ; a Catholic boy had never been seen within the walls. It needed a considerable stock of moral courage to contemplate sending me to such an establishment, where I might be ill-received, or, if n t ill-received, where I might be taught to despise the boys of my own race and creed whom I had quitted. The consent of my guardian, a parish priest living a dozen miles away, had to be obtained, and he had liberality and good sense enough to approve of the project. Mr Bleckley received me graciously, but during the first day one of the boys 'told me (what I soon learned had been muttered among many others; that ft was unpardonable presumption for a Papist to come among them. But the bigotry of boys is mostly inherited from their elders, and has little root. This lad, Mat T rumble, son of a lieutenant in the British Army, but also grandson of a chaplain of the volunteers, afterwards a notable United Irishman, soon became my close" friend. He was a youth of goo.l intellect, resolute will and considerable reading, and with such aid I did not do badly in the strange society on which I intruded. During the first year & boys' parliament, a boys' regiment, a boys' newspaper were established, which I did something to initiate, and my connection with them was vehemently resisted in the name of Protestant ascendency. But after a fierce debate the majority voted my emancipation, three years before the legislators of larger growth at Sb Stephen's made a similar concession to my seniors. I used to boast that I was the first Catholic emancipated in Ireland, but though tolerated, I was never allowed altogether to forget that I belonged to the race who were beaten at the Boyne. A cynical lad, who afterwards became a noted local preacher, sometimes occupied the recreation hour with marvellous stories of Popish atrocities, designed for my edification. One of them, which I can still recall after seventy years, is worth repeating n s a specimen of the legends current in Ulster :—: — A farmer's son — so the story ran — went to confession, and, as his offences were serious, the priest made a tally with a chalk on the sleeve of his coat, that the penance might bs proportionate to the sins. '• I was too intimate with a neighbour's daughter, your reverence." '• Very bad," says the priest." making a stroke on his arm with the chalk. lt There was a baby, your reverence, and, to keep it dark, I made her throw it in the river." " oh, you unfortunate miscreant," cried the priest, making two J.ong strokes on his arm, •' I'm afraid you'll never see purgatory ! Anything else ? " " Yes, your reverence — God forgive me — there's something worse. The girl to fretting. I was afraid she'd tell her people, and L shoved her into a bog-hole." '• Away with you !" cried the priest, starting to his feet in a rage. " I can't absolve a double murderer. who has hid his 'crime, from punishment." " But. your reverence, wait a minute. I forgot to tell you she was a black Prisbiterian." " Pooh ! pooh ! says the priest, brushing 1 the score off his arm. " why did you make me dirty my coat ?" Mat Trumble. who was present, remarked that if the story was true — and, doubtless, it wasn't — the priest might have found a precedent in Anglo-Irish history, when the violation of a married woman, with which two Norman soldiers were charged in a court of the Pale, ended m a judgment that no offence was proved, as the victim was a mere Irishwoman ! The Presbyterian planters from whom my scluolf jlljws were descended preserved to an amazing degree the ch:u\ie Lens tics of their Scottish ancestors. They ware thrifty, indu-itrijus and parsimonious, and sometimes spoke a language worthy of Dumfriesshire. Their familiar sayings were of the same origin. •• Keep the halter shank in your am h md." was a pawkie warning against a rash confidence, or •• Don't let the want come at the w^b -i end." an exhortation to foresight. The name employed to d lignite a courtesan was " an idle girl." a phrase which implies a population devoted to labour and duty. The few books which circulated among them were steeped in the bitterness of hereditary f t,u< Is. I remember being horror-struck by a copy of "Fox- Bojk of Martyrs," with illustrations fit to poison the spirit of a community for a century. Meu reared for the liberal professions mighc in time! outlive these prejudices, but with the poor and ignorant; time only deepens them. But the nationalities sometimes ininglul marvellously. I can recall more than one descendant of Puritan settlers smitten with sympathy for the Celtic tongue and Celtic traditions. and, on the other hand, O'Neills and MacMahons speaking a dialect that might pass muster in Midlothian, and practising economies which would charm Sir Andrew Wylie.